system won't boot

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I am not sure if my problem is related to hard disk or motherboard. Anyway, I have my computer running for 1.5 years. The system has Windows 2000 Server and a Western Digital 102AA EIDE drive, 1 Creative DVD drive, and a CD ROM drive. About a month ago, it started having periodic problem booting up. The system powered up and HDD spinned just less than 1 second. The system just stay power up without video. The system did not beep. When this happened, I just powered up and powered down several times. The system would eventually booted up. Two days ago, the problem worsen. I had to unplug the IDE cable connecting to the onboard IDE connector to boot the system. Today, the system does not boot at all no matter what I do. I did the following diagnostics. Reboot the machine on each diagnostic and hear no beep and no video. Does anyone know what is going wrong?

1. unplugged all add on boards.
2. cleared CMOS by resetting an onboard jumper.
3. replaced the IDE cable
4. connected IDE hard drive on the middle connector of the IDE cable.
 
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Looks like you have already covered most of what i can think of, but, did you try reconnecting all your 4-pin power supply connections. It could be that you have something (like your hardrive) connected to the board but no power going to it. I think this could cause the problem you describe.
 
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Disconnect everything but

Video
Memory
Floppy
CPU, MB of course

If you can't get into the bios.. you've limited it down to those. Data on the hard drive will be fine if you have to auto detect it again in the bios. If you don't have spare parts around to try.. it may be better to take it somewhere and have them look at it.

***Hey I run Intel... but let's get real***
 
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Thanks for the reply. Yesterday, I decided to take a more drastic approach. I replaced the power supply and only connected the cpu and hd to it. It came up like a charm. However, I still can not determine that my old power supply is bad. It installed it on another computer that has more drive than the one I am having trouble with. That computer works fine with my old power supply. I have no idea why it works that way. Anyway, my problem is solved.
 
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I'm guessing here but that was a 250W power supply wasnt it ;) sounds like it just couldnt handle the load
 
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Yeah now that you mention the p/s it's something else required for bios post. If you have a hard drive that is only spinning up for a sec, disconnecting the IDE cable later so it will post, and a mb and components that won't post a bios.. it does sorta pt to a p/s. That's a lot of things to check if you don't have spare parts lieing around, but if it is only a p/s, it is a very cheap to replace. But if you don't have the parts I would take it to a local shop and ask them to look at the p/s as that might not be it. Cpu could be going funky or memory, but I lean toward the p/s because there is no reason the hd should spin up for 1 sec and then down again unless there is something wrong with the drive, but if this were the case, the system would still post.

There is no reason why a working 250W p/s can't handle the load of older systems that are not Athlon. A non-working one is a different story.


***Hey I run Intel... but let's get real***
 

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